


be patient in affliction

by confines



Series: Mary Lou Barebone's A+ Parenting [2]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Canonical Child Abuse, Child Abuse, Credence Barebone Gets a Hug, Domestic Violence, Emotional Abuse, Gen, Mary Lou Barebone's A+ Parenting, Physical Abuse, Queenie Goldstein is a Mensch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-19
Updated: 2017-01-19
Packaged: 2018-09-18 14:42:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9389594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/confines/pseuds/confines
Summary: Queenie had caught him thinking about it once.





	

Credence remembers one evening Ma had whipped him once for each flyer he had failed to hand out. He had started the day with at least 50 pamphlets and had managed to part with less than half. If he'd known her plans, he thinks, he would have discarded some of them. But that would have been deception, and deception was a graver sin than failing to witness properly.

He remembers it all vividly. She made him count the flyers twice, and then once more when his counts were different. He remembers taking off his jacket and shirt, and then shakily sliding his belt from its loops and pressing it into her waiting hand. She had roughly grabbed him by his arm, hauling him to the kitchen and shoving him face-down against the table he had had dinner on the night before. 

He remembers the sound and feeling of his hot breath against the wood grain as he grew more and more panicked. Ma hit him so many times he thought he would die. He had counted off 32 pamphlets, but it felt like a greater number than that. By the end, he didn't even feel like a person so much as a physical manifestation of pure pain.

When she was done she had made him clean his own blood from the table and then sent him up to his room. He hadn't been able to sleep on his back or sides for weeks and several times he became convinced that it was infected but in the end it had healed. He still has the scars trailing down his back and wrapping around his ribs with the occasional divot where the belt buckle had managed to snag flesh. 

Queenie had caught him thinking about it once, when he had leaned over the dining room table to gather the dirty dishes from the other side. He blinked and he was back there with his Ma, his back being torn apart all over again. He had straightened back up, but he still felt like he was pressed against the table and he was panting like he had then. But then Queenie was hugging him from behind, one hand around his chest and the other rubbing soothing circles into his shoulder.

They stayed that way until his breathing evened out and then she stepped back and said, with an intensity she reserved for moments like this one, “I'm glad she's dead otherwise I'd want to kill her myself.”

His tongue felt like a stone in his mouth, but he nodded shortly.


End file.
